with government funding legislation later in the week. yeah, it's going to be a jam packed week for congress. they certainly have their work cut out for them. >> thanks for joining us and sharing what you know. we are going keep following you on twitter. that's @colin will help. thanks so much again. >> thanks for having me. >> next, homeland security officials discuss combatting terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. elaine duke who temporarily served at acting head until just recently. from the hudson institute this is an hour.

>> good afternoon and welcome to hudson institute. i'm ken winestein, president and ceo of hudson institute. hudson is a policy research organization dedicated to promoting security freedom, and prosperity through strong and engaged u.s. international leadership. i want to welcome both of our members of the audience and our good friends from c-span as well. one of the most important potential threats facing the united states is that of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction chemical, biological and nuclear agents to harm americans. we had this attacked the other day in new york which -- just imagine how much scarier it would have been had the terrace had weapons of mass

destruction. preventing such attacks are obviously critical to the president and his team. in his august 24th speech that outlined a new strategy for overseas. he says we must prevent weapons being used against us and around the world. for that matter. we have done a lot in the homeland security space. i should note that we are the -- home of the die owe defense commission that's cochaired by former senator joe lieberman, former dhs secretary, fofrmer governor tom ridge that seeks to improve preparedness for chemical, biological, chemical, biological, biohazard events and also seeks to improve coordination in the yash. and we have also just launched a major new project funded by the john dee and catherine t. mcarthur foundation on

sustaining bipartisan u.s. leadership against nuclear terrorism that is led by senior fellow richard white. this project intends to build an enduring foundation with inclusive u.s. global leadership regarding your security and strengthen mystic political consensus on policies and trying to counter nuclear terrorism. first speaker in this serious was chris ford. today's speaker, our first speaker is elaine c. duke, the seventh deputy of security at the department of homeland security. she just completed a term as acting secretary at dhs. she has nearly three decades of experience at the dhs in senior positions where she was under secretary of management for the tsa and various roles in the department of defense. she's going deliver remarks on

department's new countering weapons of mass destruction office that was created earlier this week. this will elevate and streamline dhs efforts to prevent terrorists or rogue nations from using weapon of mass destruction against the u.s. or its partners and allow for greater plans and visibility for this important mission. after her remarks we'll have questions from john walters who is hudson's chief operating officer. he's gopg moderate a discussion with james mcdonnell. he's my partner as our coo. none of the growth would have been possible without his wisdom and insight. he is also more importantly on this occasion, former director of the national drug control policy where under his tenor from 201 to 2009 we saw record

reductions in teen drug use and significant reductions in cocaine and met amphetamine use. as well as the effective use of injection drugs coming in from rogue states. that's an area john knows well and can speak to. he'll be moderating discussion with secretary duke and the new director of the -- or the acting assistant secretary john mccain. he was elected by president trump to serve has the dhs domestic nuclear detection office. he's a navy veteran who spent 20 years in counterterrorism operations before the federal government. without any further ado, it's my pleasure to turn it over the secondary duke. >> thank you, mr. winestein and

i appreciate hudson institute's leadership in this area. i see several professional friends in this audience, and it really is a group effort to make sure we are staying ahead of the threats against the united states. so for my teammates here and those of you from private industry that really support dhs in our continuing effort tos get better at countering weapon of mass destruction as well as other threats to our home hand, i approach your support. i want to start by highlighting the threat landscape. each day the secretary and i begin a day with an intelligence briefing. we see the dangers of country is facing and track the threat streams. over the past year, being back, one of things that's been most significant is that we face a persistent and ever evolving threat from weapons of mass

destruction. when we look at the threats against us in chemical, buy lodge category, nuclear and raid logical, it's evolving in its persistence, whether it comes from rogue states or terrorist groups our adversaries are interested in creating terror through the use of these weapons. they are focused on wmd agents not just because of their destructive potential but because of their psychological impact. many of us remember the 1995 chemical attack on a tokyo subway when cult members release sarin during rush hour. that attack killed five people and injured several others. also if you're like me, you remember working in washington, d.c. when anthrax spores were

mails throughout the city. this year, we continue to see wmd threats on display around the world. in april, the saad regime in syria attacked rebels with sarin gas. the attack killed more than 90 people. in recent months, nourk has tested nuclear weapons and missiles that might be able to reach our territory and we have seen terrorist groups use their overseas battlefields as test beds of terror to develop new attack met odds. isis for example has deployed chemical weapons and plans to use them in terrorist attacks in the west. what's worse, the blueprints for creating rudimentary wmd devices welcome back spread quickly and can clan destinely on the

internet. also against those on the horizon. for example, as we see advancements in the dbio sciences, we must be prepared for the possibility that innovations designed to save lives could also be used to end them. it's against that backdrop that we decided to make a big change at the dependence of homeland security. for many months we have engaged in an effort to increase and improve our security across the board. we are reviewing every corner of the department. when we find gaps we look for ways to fill them. when we find parts in isolation, we look for ways to connect them. we need to connect them in your defense as our terrorist foes are connecting them in the battlefield. when we find standards that don't fit the current threat environment, we are finding ways to raise them. for instance, we are starting

shutting down potential terrorist pathways in your country. we are ramping up screening and vetting of u.s. bound travelers and immigrants. we are setting a new bar for information sharing with our foreign partners and today i am pleased to announce that we are taking decisive action to protect our homeland against weapons of mass destruction. for too long, dhs has not been properly organized to confront the wmd threat. it wasn't because we lacked expertise or didn't see this threat as a priority. rather our efforts for fragme fragmented. we lacked the clear leadership in this space. while many national security departments consolidated their wmd making policies in the wake of 9/11, dhs was not designed that way. that has caused a lack of

visit visibility for this space. it led to significant internal -- in some cases, waste, overlap, and duplication of effort. multiple reviews in the last ten years, both internal and external to the department have highlighted our shortcoming in the space. something needed to change. so this year, we again examine the current structure in previous reviews. we found that in light of the current threat environment, we had to take steps to improve the effectiveness of our wmd defense functions. if first step of that process is a broad reorganization that we are eager to talk about today. the countering weapons of mass destruction office. this is in the a quick fix. it is not simply moving boxes. and it's not going solve all our problems in a one-step solution. however this office will lay the

foundation for a strategic direction that we need to be more strategic and accurate in protecting our country. the full range of changes that need to be in place will take time. and we are eager to work with congress to make sure the office is postured to confront all the threats we are facing. this reorganization is something congress has been eager to see for a while and we are glad that there is bipartisan support for continues improvements in this area. the office will consolidate all functions that fall neat cwmd. primarily, the office will consolidate what was dndo and the majority of office of health affairs which had the buy logical and kel threats. for the first time, the

department of homeland security will have a focal point for wmd issues. experts in the field rb brought together under one leader. i'm very excited that leader is james mcdonnell. before this reorganization, he served as the director of dndo. he's a recognized expert in the field of wmd, terrorism and an experienced military officer. he was part of original executive leadership team at dhs in 2003 where he was responsible for the manage omit of today's infrastructure office. he has also held senior office positions at the department of energy and in the white house. in the private sector he developed security and other risk management functions. he's also a veteran that retired from the navy. no one is better prepared for more qualified for this role.

i'm glad to have him here with me today as we answer questions about the organization and increased focus. internally, this reorganization will strengthen our operational activities and allow us to better support front line personnel who are critical to this mission space. the domestic nuclear detection office operated an exceptional end to end business modelle we plan to use will want os that have model to identify gaps, find solutions and deploy them to the men and women in the field be our operating components. for example, the office is focused on deploying the right technologies to customs and borders so they can detect threats. we also plan to phase out older systems and deploy cutting edge technologies. this ensewers our operators have

nothing short of the best technology able to disrupt the threat of wmd before they reach our borders. we can integrate your wmd detection capabilities and leverage data into targeting and activities. externally, the cwmd office will allowtous work more closely and effectively with our parter ins in the law enforcement and technical from the fbi to the cia to state and local partners who are critical from keeping our communities safe. make no mistake, our enemies and adversaries are constantly probing our borders to see how they can threaten us including with weapons of mass destruction. but the d hrk s, the cwmd office will be at the forefront to

build defenses against kel, biological nuclear and radiation devices. there's a lot of work to be down, but this is a great start and i'm up to the task. now i'm excited to sit down and get some questions and provide you with more information about dhs and our work in this area. >> thank you, madam secretary. thank you. can you talk a little wit about how that threat has shifted and how these plans kind of mesh with that? >> sure. we are seeing a increase through intelligence of threat just in terms of volume, especially in the kel and bio logical areas. additionally we are seeing a lot of decent ralization, a lot of

inspired attacks. that's makes it challenging because we are not seeing long advanced times. so we have to be agile, out there and ready. >> how does that compare to the general terrorism threat you also are responsible for combatting? it is unique in this dimension? or is it parallel? >> i think it's similar, but it's the reverse. where in cwmd, we have the lower probability, at least traditionally in the higher consequence, we see at the other end of the spectrum, the lower consequence but higher probability. a lot of the attacks we have seen is terrorists using any weapon. the problem is, whether it's a weapon of mass destruction or box truck, it's creating terror so there are two tragedies. one is the actually destruction at the sight, but the second is

the introduction, psychological of terror. >> of those different forms of wmd threat, which do you canner the most pressing at this point? >> i think from nonstate actors we see an indication of the desire to use chemical weapons that are easy, or relatively easy to produce, probably followed by biological weapons. i think they're more accessible. >> maybe you get to the office and what it changes. what unique authorities does the office pull together that homeland security department has and how do you intend to use those authorities? >> i'll let jim answer that. mainly at the highest level, what we need to do whenever we are addressing threats we have to make sure we are doing a risk based look at the threats.

when we look at chemical, bio logical and nuclear, there's similarity from a risk per speck tiff. jim, you want to add? >> sure. i think probably the biggest convergence of authorities is -- dndo when it was created was everything from threat and risk analysis to theification of gaps in the feel, understanding how the operators need support to develop the tools to get out to the operators and deploy support. it's got a well established business model. when oha was created it brought in the national buy logical center but didn't have a lot of -- tremendous amount of technical expertise bum by merging them together, we have the ability to use -- broad

authorities to deal with literally from intelligence analysis to buying equipment and maintaining it throughout its lifestyle. so it gives us a flexibility to say the threat as deputy secretary mentioned. change i have seen in my career from state actors being primarily who you're concerned with to nonstate actors and proliferation of state actors. toufb worried about a microbiologist. ten 15 years ago, that wasn't something we are dealing with today. >> what jim talked about about the operators -- what we are focused on in this new office and across dhs head quarters is being uniformly focused on the

operators. we are here to support the operators in carrying out their mission. i think that's something the old dndo model did relatively well in terms of making sure they were an enabler of the mission. we are looking foushd rward to continuing to refine that so we are across all of the head quarters offices, look at how do we enable the operators by delivering the resources the tools, the policies to they wm help them. >> how much of the work did you see in this office involving components of d hrk s and how much of it is tied to other outside agencies, even foreign countries? >> there's a couple thousand cvp officers a day looking for

radiological to come across the border. this department, post legislation in 1996, the federal government issued about 57,000 radiological detecters throughout to countriment so everything from local police officers, hazmat teams. cpb. coast guard -- there's a tremendous amount of capability. it's literally a team of teams. i know it sounds a little bit like a cliche, but -- >> sounds like a book. >> when we look at how a response is going to happen. new york yesterday was a rather poorly constructed pipe bomb that would have just as well been yad yo logical material. the first responder that is respond are the same people. our focus is understanding what the operators requirements are,

how the sequencing of events is going to go, and making sure everybody has the appropriate support they need. we are a support organization. so our primary job is to support the operators. as she mentioned, we recently closed a joint analysis center, which was a dndo two person operations center doing monitors. into the center, a big data global system, which makes us much more relevant. overlaying with other data as opposed to little subsets here and there. >> i think although most of the office's technology will go dhs, we are doing a tremendous amount of international work. so with the diversity and the intensity of the threat, information sharing about

people, about you know intelligence is absolutely critical. so tangent shl with the work cwmd will do, other head quarters -- we have got get ahead of this timewise. we can't wait. as i said earlier, because a lot of these threats are not -- they're obviously nonstate actors but also not well planned all the time. the amount of time from the idea to radicalization could be very short. or from the idea of implementation. we have got to have strong partnerships internationally and info sharing in every possible way is critical to that. >> what you're saying. how much of this threat then are the shift in focus of the office is from what might be in the past thought of as an

intelligence problem to see well developed threats come to you to kind of more immediate detection capability of something you may not have much intelligence on or any intelligence lead time on? >> that's a good point. we may not have any intelligence tactically, but we have strategic tension. we know what types of capabilities are being developed. if we can inform the operators of what to look for -- i always like to use to example for folks who are a little older who can remember pollaroid cameras. >> they're back in now. >> they only had two purposes. one with you for a picture or a letter bomb. if a police officer pulled one over and saw one in there, that's bomb making material, gives them right to search the

vehicle. if we can give them that knowledge, what somebody might be using making tatp, which is a mome home made explosive -- those things, we have 8,000 police officers. that's a tremendous amount of eyeballs looking at things. when we first started the department, tom ridge said something to me which i thought was great. he said, we have 800,000 law enforcement. they know when something's wrong. it's our job to figure out what's wrong. there's more technology we can apply, but we have to increase our likely had of encounter. so we have a joint task force east, west, and they're each doing approaches, campaigns. we have embedded folks in their staffs looking for wmd. but it's all through the front line operators.

through cpb,i.c.e., the rest of the department. >> maybe this is a little more specializ specialized, but can you explain how this is going work across the individual agents? these kind of cross cutting functions are always an issue because someone's trying to manage the coast guard for the secret service or i.c.e. or cpb. and someone is trying to say, your operation should go this way. or it's always a fight over reason. how do you see this work something. >> when we were talking about this and the many millions of models that we could do, i told jim and miles taylor, who was critical in setting this up, the older i get, the more i feel like optimizization is the right answer. so i think an extreme consolidation is inappropriate

and decent ralization is inappropriate. so if jim were to try to pull up operations and pull up too much so coast guard and i.c.e. couldn't operate -- the dhs was set up saying they should have all the authorities and resources to execute their missions. that will stay. what we do is weir the optimum level of centralization where we add efficiencies -- why should everyone doing rnd on precursoo chemicals? we don't have to resources money wise or timewise to do that. this is going to be one where we're going continue to revise it. the operation level is somewhere near here, but it may change over time or based on a specific project. but what we are doing so to do the appropriate amount of

centralization so we can efficiently deliver decentralized capability. >> i would dove tail that. i mentioned we are a support component. myself and dave flewty who currently leads dha,so the top two folks are oha sbrks dndo. dave was a customs officer for 20 years. he and i have gone and met with every single component head. talks with the chief operating folks the component commanders. we are just starting a process dndo used for several years. we are doing the same thing starting next week for wmd. we bring the components together. talk through what the requirements are, how can we support those, but they decide what the priorities are. we execute against those.

so somebody from cpb, i.c.e.,coast guard, we're sitting at the table together. they can drive, here's the support we need. here is how he sequence out the support. >> for those of you that are familiarity with the unity of effort, this is really the next phase of that. we built out some of the unity acquisition -- like a performance review board, budget, but what we have to drive for is sound operational requirements. driving into requirements rnd and then driving through what i call that left side. en why, coming from your strategic plan. developing operational requirements. where do we have these capability gaps. that's the process jim is saying there. without that where we developed

the other programs like the budget and the acquisitional process and the disposele process, those can never be 100% effective without the initial work being done. >> maybe the same issue. one is which of the agencies are most closely akin to -- who are you going to work with most closely? who do you rely on outside of dhs? >> there's actually an interagency community that works wmd issues. so one way you could look at us is a defense threat reduction agenciment your job so to look for technologies to support the war fighters. they grew out of the defense nuclear agency so a very similar growth pattern. so come, special operations

command is researching the need for defense. we work very closely with the fbi, the department of energy, nsa, the nuclear security administration. is there is really already a robust administration. bob carrick leads the response for bio terrorism. we are good friends. we worked together for 25 years. we all know each other and it's a common mission. it's a group of us who understands supporting to folks out in the field. it's a body of friends, quite frankly, that get together professionally that say, what do we need to fix. how do we need to fix it? how do we get the support out as quickly as we can. >> the other part i was going

ask you about is gaps. how much of this, as you look towards the future in addition to -- you mentioned a chemistry professor at a community college being a threat. but also with proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons, how much of this down the road are you worried that it becomes decentralized, through agents of agents and the threat from some place like north korea, iran or plying weapons of mass destruction is reality. >> the threat is real. it's going to continue to be real. it's going to continue. i think what we are getting better at is closing the gaps. what we really are looking to is addressing the seams. so what we can't afford to either timewise or otherwise is to have a seam between different areas. one of biggest changes, the one coming back from being retired

seven years i have seen is just the lack of space between national security and homeland security. that's at the highest level. when i left in 2010, homeland security and national security were addressed totally separate. now most of our national security efforts the work done by dod ander others and on behalf of homeland security. it's the away gail of counterterrorism and homeland security. so what we have is not a gap, but we still have a seam. i think what we are challenged with today is how do we make sure those seams aren't hardballs that they're permeable. and i think kpicombining the threats helps do that to make sure we are not just addressing the threats as silos but with walls in between. >> how much is this decision and the new office reflect a larger

issue for the future of homeland security as a department? is this part of looking at seams or looking at how to manage cross cutting capability largely? >> i think it does in terms of expansion of the types of threats we are seeing and the regularens of those threats. so i think it is -- and i also think at is also reflective of looking at things. as we were getting ready to come on, i said, for every dollar are we spending it on the combined risk? i think it helps us move further into that base look at addressing terrorism. >> how do you see this office evolve something if you were to look back at this in e-year, 24

months, where do you want to be? >> we want to be better integrated. putting folks into joint task forces. we are embedding at cpb. we have a joint program office to do the portal replacement program. so the radiation detection equipment. integration across the board. as an example, we talked about the business model in dndo. i had several all hands meetings talking through the past few weeks, last few months. had a group that does our systems planning and acquisition in a room and i said, how many people in here are nuclear experts? about five people raised their hand. but about 40 of these people are prom development folks. so if i take five bio people and plug them into that, because,

they have tremendous capability and talent -- i just created a acquisition that has chem and bio expertise. it's getting that expert to help -- you see a much more integrated approach. nypd when they call up and say, we need assistance, they'll be able to call one place and talk to us. right now in new york city, we have a skeer the cities program, which is a rad nuke assistance program and a bio launch program. they're completely separately managed right now. over time we'll be able to integrate that and be measure more affective, be able to share information as it's coming out and be able to be much more flexible. the will be organized on the mission. >> i think that this change

could be the model or the pilot, if you will, for a redesignated version 3.0 of dhs head quarters. having been in the department back at its start, i go back to hd prk s five. what's the purpose of the department in to close gaps and minimize redundancies. i think this type of model gets us back to those roots and the problem we were solving when we set up the department of homeland security. it's cliche, but that's the value proposition. that's why we're going back to the basics of why we're the department. >> you both have a lot of experience as ken mentioned in the destruction. i want for our friends watching the stream of this at c-span who are not professional and experts

in this, if you could address how you see the possibilities for this. you're looking at going online a year or two down the line. you have people every day on the front line. trying to make their needs easier to meet and more robustly satisfying. how do you see the stages of your support for this? how far out do you think you can look and plan these capacities or prepare for threats? >> well, on the nuclear side right now, we are looking out 15 years. programically. what equipment is out there, what coverage do we have. sort of a map of the globe and you say, where do we have robust detection capability? where do we have gaps? in the acquisition cycle, that planning has been going on for some time. i don't think it's a huge leap to overlay the other technical specialties in that same time

line. as i mentioned, you look around the united states and the defensive posture, we are pushing off into the caribbean, the northern try angle, looking at drug trafficking routes, human trafficking routes. a friend of mine had an inter t interesti interesting perspective. he said some people like to look at wmd in one scope. i like to sprink it it throughout. it's a question of having the desire to say, we are going plug into this andfy what's on the shelf. what's commercially available technology we can push out now. how do we improve things over time. we need to be very fast and very flexiblement and the bad guys are as well. they're getting new information. we need to be ahead of the power curve. so not reacting to what they're

doing but making them wonder what we are doing. >> one of changs of having an acquisition background is in many d.o.d. programs you go through a cycle. you go through the milestones of the acquisition and you have your design and your prototype and you go through the steps. in dhs, we are consistently in all stages. one of challenges we have in pulling technology to our operators is when is it time? when do you wait for perfection? when do you deliver something better? it's resource constrain and technology constrain. that's one of challenges we are to have. if we get an incremental progress, do we deliver that new technology? at what point do you invest and

deliver it? that's one of problems we have. we are not seeing major leaps. in technology. we are seeing incremental improvements. that is challenging decisions to make. you want to have every capability out at the current state of technology, but then again, you know, do you wait? for the better technology? and then how often can you refresh? >> why don't you give us a guideline for that? obviously you're doing cost benefit, risk. but how do you think about that? >> it's a lot of factors. one is how close is the next level of technology. and i think another criteria is how bad is the current capability gap? so if we have no capability in that area and we have to deliver, whatever, we can. it's a whole set of factors.

i think experience and judgment as in any tradeoff comes in, but what we have learned is we have to not wait for perfection. and continue do incremental work whether it's radiation portal monitors of magnetometers for the tsa, but we got to continue to incrementally deliver it. >> one thing to follow up -- a better understanding of the operators requirements and the fact that most of the technology we deploy is to inform the operators to make better judgment realtime. rather than going down the rabbit hole of saying, i need this super high speed wiz bang thing, say how does that guy operate on a daily base sbis what can i make their life better with? if i can get something out there

to help somebody scan something a little quicker -- an an officer on he can't carry a bunch of gear. they need gear that's tailored to their operational environment. that gear is on the shelf but they don't know that. it's encouplent ontous know how they're operating and make sure they get what they need to operate in the environment. we make huge leaps in doing that. get the guys what they need at the time they need it and the larger acquisition programs they go thank you a normal cycle. but the ability to rapidly prototype things. we have taken on the nuke side everything that's trl 6 and above and we are kicking it out the door. we are working with the coast

guard and cpb. we are pushing out out into the operational environments. having that inform the acquisition process. we are making the process itself a little more operationally focus focused. >> we mentioned state and local. we haven't mentioned industry yet. it can be a big part of our ability to move forward. how much can industry deliver capabilities that are plug and play, that can be refleshed without disassembles a machine and replanting another one. those types of things. it with the state of security -- i worked more in the afuation lately. i think industry is very interested in helping us address security. if a plane goes down, that's not good for anyone, including both the aircraft industry and the airlines.

we would hope for the same type of cooperation as we move forward in the nuke areas. >> that will be part of the responsibility if your area. >> yes. in fact there's been a lot of industry outreach already. between all the twork dod has done and the industry that the technologies that are available in the private sector. a big part of my job is educating industry on what we are looking for, where we are going, what we need so they can tune up their rnd internally to compete for that work. one of challenges we have got that was any way blue ribbon panel study is leapfrogging from the current biowatch from -- which does exactly what it was designed to do and does it well, but it's not realtime or near realtime detection. it's tough to get a business to invest a lot of capital in a technology if you're only

deploying to 34 places. but if you say i'm going deploy to thousands of places but it's going to be -- more like a plug and play burglar aarm. that's a market that's big enough to start driving action and integrates into the big data concept. so when you're integrated into a larger system, that drives industry investment and interest. the more we can get out of being a little niche organization and being more effective the more the industry push will be. >> you mentioned the work that you have done in term offense spilling over into things like human trafficking or drug trafficking. i know there's been a lot of talk about transnational crime and terrorism blending together. obviously you're talking about the threat of individuals who become radicalized so there's

not much clear locus ahead of time. how do you see these kinds of threats from state sponsors, actual organized groups versus criminal group that is may also blend into this threat and then just kind of almost spontaneous individuals pop up? >> there's a link -- transnational criminal organizations use crimes like human smuggling to fund themselves. unfortunately whether they smuggle a human or a kilo of cocaine, they don't care. they're making unmany. that's the truth of it and the sadness of it. in this case, what we are concerned about is not only the human tafactor, which is exfreedomly important, but you the ability to fund themselves. we see that in the trafficking to the south of us but some of

organizations in some of the foreign areas where they are looking to raise money and to keep interest up in them. that's why one of the things we are pushing hard on is taking down terrorist material on the internet. one because we don't want it up there because people can read it. but second is we don't want to inentire, we don't want them to use to internet to get people excited about their terrorist organization because that funds it and then it's that bad cycle so they're different from a law enforcement perspective, but they're all the same. about raising money to do bad things. >> do you see transnational crime groups as a growing threat for terror? >> we -- our -- i believe so. our largest growing in the united states threat was homegrown violent extremists.

so from that perspective, yes, because the homegrown violent extremism is coming from those internation international, transnational routes. >> just to dove tail on that, the -- if we effect the -- say opt drug trafficking. if we effect drug trafficking there's still a criminal enterprise there. the likelihood they're going look for other things to smuggle. that's going to happen. we have to accept those organizations are there. they're going to morph and we need to morph with them and change and adapt as they do. but to do that, you need to have flexibilitiment if everything we do is a cookie cutter approach, then we can't get out in front of them and we need to get out in front of them. >> there's a lot of talk about the kind of revolution that is

now ongoing but even coming with greater magnitude regarding the use of big data and artificial intelligence to create signal out of noise and if you have enough sensors. can you talk about how the department sees that aez possibility of the future and how that applies these threats? >> we have crosswalked a system called dorpa. it's realtime transmitting data. that's a huge leap from what we had just a few years ago. the question is, what do you do with that data? we are starting to deploy smarter technology, but you the amount of time it can be affected by alarms is a really big deal, because it just takes -- if you have a bunch of sensors and it's too sensitive

and you're responding to every time it triggers they be you're not able to do your job. so a big part of this is going to be building in the background to be able to look for anomalies rather than lack for specific things. similar in the bio space. as we field detecters the ambient materials in the air in denver are different than washington sophomore having better sensors and inputs is interesting but you have to have the big data in the background to be able to do that. that's where the integration targeting operations is going to pay big dividends because we don't have an eare crete that. it already exists. >> so you don't think this is going to be a cure all i take it? >> absolutely not. we'll never be done. the terrorist is going continue to evolve, the threats will continue to evolve, our homeland

will continue to evolve. we will always be adapting and improving. this is one step. we are working with congress for additional steps. we continue to look at our very limited rnd dollars and how we should spend them. that will be the next thing how we work with the other agencies. there's many, many steps. we felt it was important to take the first step. i think that we can overplan, and to have such a grand vision that weld never start and i think it's best to get started. >> last question for you -- um, when you think about -- i remember i was at the government after is 9/11 and we sat around at one point and thought about all the different ways we could be vulnerable in a free society,

which are vast. in some ways the surprise was that a lot of them were unexploited. and i presume there's ongoing efforts to try to provide an assess. of what could be high risk attacks or vulnerabvulnerabilit you have to deal with this day-to-day but also preparing us for the next five years or ten years. how do you find it best to sort through these possibilities versus what you're actually going put hard wired people on for a threat? how do you tell the difference? >> honestly i think most of it is team work and talking a lot and bringing the components together and sitting around a table and saying, where sit tactically? we need to be taking action, but also strategically. what are we doing the next five years? the mission is going continue to change.

i think the biggest mistake anybody in the security business is sit back and think, okay, i got it covered. the second you got it covered the adversary is going change or something else is going change. you don't control the environment. the best thing you do is make it more difficult for them do planning and rop rations. as simple as it sounds, the see something, say something campaign is massive. if everybody is looking around and thinking, that package shouldn't be there and they tell a police officer, that is huge.